Her Honor Decides It Just Doesn’t Pay to Be a Mayor

--For 10 minutes, Lois Reed was the first woman mayor of Malinta, Ohio. Ten minutes was how long it took for Reed to be sworn in as mayor, call the council meeting to order, resign her post and then take the oath as the village’s clerk-treasurer. Reed, 56, who has completed almost 11 years as Malinta’s part-time clerk-treasurer, said the low pay as mayor forced her to resign. She was elected the village’s first woman mayor last November and she hadn’t been able to find a full-time civilian job to support herself. “Too many companies like their bills paid,” she said, and she couldn’t pay them on the mayor’s salary. The mayor’s job pays $1,000 a year; the clerk-treasurer’s, $5,200. “I would have liked to have kept the mayor’s job,” she said, but it wasn’t to be. Councilman Jim Harman was appointed mayor of Malinta (pop. 327).

--Los Angeles Councilwoman Joy Picus has received a citation at a ceremony in New York for Ms. Magazine’s “Women of the Year.” Picus was honored for introducing comparable worth legislation and for her work on the pay equity agreement between the city of Los Angeles and unions. The President’s daughter, Patti Davis, was cited for maintaining her own liberal beliefs yet honoring her family. A telegram from her parents was read at the ceremony in which they thanked her “for making us feel we must have done something right. God bless you.” Also honored were AIDS researcher Dr. Mathilde Krim; comedienne Lily Tomlin; Lynette Woodard, first female member of the Harlem Globetrotters; gerontologist Elaine Brody; Portland, Ore., Police Chief Penny Harrington and Suzanne De Passe, president of Motown Productions.

--”Roots” author Alex Haley will teach a course in magazine writing this term at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

--Former Metropolitan Opera soprano Beverly Sills presided over “topping out” ceremonies as the final steel support beam of the $526-million Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in Florida was hoisted into place. The steel beam, signed by school children as “dignitaries of the future,” was placed atop the 2,400-seat Festival Hall at the nine-acre site downtown overlooking the Hillsborough River. It is scheduled to open in early 1987. Sills, director of the New York City Opera, headed a list of dignitaries that included Tampa Mayor Robert Martinez and H.L. Culbreath, chairman of the center’s board of trustees.